Welcome to Impeding Progress!

Welcome to my new blog!  You may know me from my other blog at www.edwinleap.com/blog.  That's my home.  That's the place where I write, and where I repost columns I have published in other venues. 

If you don't know me, here's a run-down.  I'm a Christian.  I'm a husband and father of four.  I'm an emergency physician.  But I'm also a writer.  For 15 years I have written a monthly column for the Greenville News, Greenville, SC.  For 11 years I have written a monthly column for Emergency Medicine News (my columns are archived here http://journals.lww.com/em-news/Pages/collectiondetails.aspx?TopicalCollectionId=6) .  My columns are often found at http://www.kevinmd.com/  or http://www.getbetterhealth.com/ , which are both excellent physician run sites.  Much of what I write concerns medicine, faith or family, with a little politics and culture thrown in. 

But I want this blog to be different.  I see blogging as a camp that is roughly divided in two.  There are blogs that are written by content producers; that's what I do.  I write all the time, and for better or worse, I publish it and hope for links, both large and small.  And there are blogs that are managed by aggregators.  That is, folks who laboriously and with passion search to and fro for information to link for the benefit of the rest of us. 

Some blogs are both.  Instapundit (http://www.instapundit.com/) comes to mind, as Glenn Reynolds both writes and links.  That's probably where I'll end up, here at 'Impeding Progress.'  I have ideas.  But I really need yours.

You see, here's the point.  There are those of us 'in the trenches.'  Physicians, businessmen, teachers, soldiers, social workers and the list goes on.  We face the public.  We pay the taxes.  We live under the heavy hand of a vast, Biblical-sized plague of rules, laws and regulations. We deal with the consequences, intended and unintended, of the things imposed on us by 'smarter people,' or 'better people.' 

We are usually too busy to lobby, to march, to travel to Washington or even to blog with any regularity.  Thus, unlike the ruling class, we are (in very real modern terms) disarmed.  No one listens to our ideas because we aren't in academia, or we aren't on any board of directors.  We aren't political consultants or business consultants. We're just doing the work. 

You'd think someone would say, 'what's going on with the masses in my field?' But it seldom happens.  What they usually say is:  'I have an idea that will make the masses better, smarter, healthier, more efficient, more compliant, safer, etc. They won't like it, but they aren't smart enough to decide for themselves.'

We, in the trenches, are struggling to make progress in this world. To help our children, to create businesses and wealth, to engage in charity, to spread our beliefs in love.  We are the true progressives.  But we are ever under the thumb of others. 

So I want your stories.  Not angry diatribes or vindictive invectives.  I want you to tell me what you do, in the real world, and how some stupid rule or regulation, some crazy tax or oversight impedes your progress, or makes the world a far, far worse place than it could be.  I know that you may be in trouble if you speak out, so if you want to remain anonymous I'm cool with that.  

Will you join in?  Let's show our 'betters' how they're impeding progress.  And give them some ideas from the trenches on how to  make things better.

Like for instance, leaving us all alone.  So that we can do something useful.
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